Nonprofit Workers Need Unions, Too
Young radicals often work at nonprofits out of a genuine desire to challenge the symptoms of capitalism. But they often find that the nonprofit model rests on their own exploitation — and on preserving the political status quo.
As socialists look out at the horizon of the struggle for a radically reformed society, we should try, like good Marxists, to anticipate where and with whom conflicts are likely to arise and how we are going to deal with those challenges. The local nature of coming fights and the arenas in which we operate may be setting the stage for increasing conflict with the “nonprofit industrial complex,” which present unique and dangerous challenges and for which we need to prepare to contend with not only outright class enemies but also our erstwhile allies. We cannot contend with the nonprofit world in the same ways as capital; they enjoy legitimacy and prestige not only among progressives but among many radicals as well, and often that esteem is well deserved and rooted deeply in marginalized communities. But conflict will come, and in that conflict, a radical labor approach will be a critical tool.
Nonprofits, “Nonprofits,” and NGOs
Strictly speaking, unions and fraternal societies are “nonprofits,” both by the United Nations’ international definition of a “nongovernment organization” and the US Internal Revenue Service Code, 26 U.S.C. Section 501(c). A union is technically a 501(c)(5) organization, and a fraternal society is a 501(c)(8) organization, and the United Nations defines an NGO as, “any non-profit, voluntary citizens’ group which is . . . [t]ask-oriented and driven by people with a common interest[.] NGOs perform a variety of service and humanitarian functions, bring citizen concerns to governments, advocate and monitor policies and encourage political participation through provision of information. Some are organized around specific issues, such as human rights, environment or health.”
But people seem to mean something specific when they talk about “nonprofits” or NGOs (which I’ll use instead of the more US-specific “nonprofit” or “NPO”). A union may be an NGO by a technical definition; but in political language at least, we tend to mean organizations which are funded not by “members” but by donors, and which serve a specific external constituency, “filling a public need.” They exist not to make profit, but to “do good” — they are considered not part of “commerce,” not economic actors, but part of “civil society.”
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